School, Italy. Deep educational inequalities

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10 September 2023

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23 September 2023

Published by Sabrina Bergamini on 14 September 2023

School, all the numbers of the crisis

Despite the difficulties in which the school finds itself and the promises that arise every now and then, there is a lack of fundamental investments in education. During the pandemic there was a temporary increase in investments linked to emergency management and it reached 4,3% of GDP. Now, however, explains Save the Children, investments in education are falling again and today stand at 4,1% compared to a European average of 4,8%.

The school is affected by demographic decline, with the result that the number of students is decreasing. Compared to 7 years ago, almost 71.000 fewer children have crossed the threshold of primary school.

Nurseries, canteens and full-time they are still for a few. Coverage in public and private 0-2 year old educational facilities in the 2021/2022 educational year is equal to 28 places available for 100 children residents, well below the European target of 33% that was to be achieved by 2010. And very far from the new European-wide target of 45% by 2030.

According to the latest available data, still relating to the 2021/2022 school year, only 38,06% of primary school classes are full-time: less than four out of ten, even if five years earlier it stopped at a third (32,4% in the 2017/2018 school year). Alone just over half of primary school students attends the school canteen (54,9%).

School dropout in Italy it is higher than the European average: it reaches 11,5% against 9,6% in the EU (2022 data).

8,7% of students is in a condition of implicit dispersion (according to INVALSI data from 2023), a percentage decreasing compared to last year, but still higher than that recorded before the pandemic (7,5% in 2019). The implicit dispersion “concerns those who, despite obtaining a high school diploma, do not reach the levels of skills required in the Italian, mathematics and English tests, showing levels of skills that correspond to the educational objectives set for eighth grade students” (Save the Children dossier).

Students with a migrant background

"The school represents the key place in which to combat educational inequalities, the main theater of meeting and interaction between students with different backgrounds and of contamination between cultures, knowledge and languages. However, the difficulties of renewal linked to the scarcity of organisational, economic and professional resources that characterize Italian schools make the challenge particularly difficult, in particular for institutions located in the most disadvantaged areas from a socio-economic point of view.” (Save the Children).

Students with a migrant background they are minors born in Italy with at least one of their parents who entered Italy as a migrant and minors who arrived in Italy from other countries in which they were born and partly lived. They are Italians in fact but without citizenship. For this reason, Save the Children has also launched a campaign to recognize citizenship for children and adolescents born in Italy or who arrived here as children (3).

Minors without citizenship, who are they

We are talking about over 800 thousand minors, equal to over 1 in 10 (10,6%) among those enrolled in nursery, primary and secondary schools in Italy.

In the 2021/2022 school year, students without Italian citizenship were 872.360 with an increase of 0,8% compared to the previous school year. They are mostly present in the North (65,5% of all foreign students present in Italy), followed by the Center (21,9%) and the South and Islands (12,6%). The regions that faced a greater increase compared to the school year However, 2019/2020 are Basilicata (+4,1%), Puglia (+2,5%) and Campania (+1,8%). Among the "foreign" students, i born in Italy I'm almost seven out of ten (67,5%).

Less than half of students with non-Italian citizenship is of non-Italian origin European (44,1%), followed by students of African (27,56%) and Asian origin (20,52%), for an overall picture of almost 200 countries of origin.

Despite the improvements of the past years, “students with a migrant background generally have school careers characterized by greater delays, dropouts and school dropouts".

Many students with a migrant background in fact have fewer opportunities than their schoolmates, starting frominclusion in nursery school, to academic delay due to placement in lower classes to those corresponding to the chronological age or age failure to admit to the following year, untilearly abandonment, passing in some territories also through the so-called phenomenon of white flight.

In fact, Save the Children points out, among the dynamics affecting schools, "the movement by Italian families of children and adolescents to schools located in central urban areas, thus increasing the concentration of foreign students in peripheral schools".

According to a study cited by the association, especially in primary school (elementary school) “the less prepared and motivated teachers are assigned to classes with a higher concentration of students of foreign origin".

Pupils born or raised in Italy, but without Italian citizenship, experiment different paths than their classmates, encounter difficulties in participating in school trips, stays abroad, sports competitions. All this intersects with a citizenship reform that is increasingly necessary and yet has been stalled for some time, despite the various proposals that have alternated, from the ius soli temperate to the ius scholae. And we still wait, despite educational inequalities and the good intentions of those who talk about school, minors and child protection but always stop at words.

Sabrina Bergamini